Read an Excerpt
Leave Foraging to the Professionals
Every morning, I circle the camp on a four-wheeler. I’m looking for any new developments on the land, such as a tree that needs to be pulled down or signs that something more alarming has happened in the dangerous hours of the night. I leave directly after I finish my breakfast and a cup of coffee. My house is on the campground, so it’s easy for me to take the early shift.
The whole thing began one morning last August. There’s never usually many people awake during my first patrol, so it was especially noticeable when I saw him approaching, walking down the middle of the road. A man in his thirties, bald, bare-faced, his face and ears covered in piercings, and with rings on every finger. His clothing was ordinary, a black hoodie and jeans. He walked slowly and deliberately, his head bowed so that it was difficult to see his expression, and—as always—he carried before him in both hands a cup made from a human skull. I pulled the four-wheeler over and waited, my stomach twisting with apprehension.
I have drunk from his cup before.
Years ago, he stopped me on the road. I thought he was a camper needing assistance, until he handed me the skull cup and bade me drink. I did, as I had already learned that when a being of power asks something of you, it is better to comply.
He lifted the cup to my lips and I drank. One swallow. Another. He kept the cup there; his thin fingers brushed my hair back when it slipped past my ear, and I drank almost half of the cup’s contents. The liquid inside tasted bitter and salty with a vegetal undertone. My stomach burned, and I swallowed hard, struggling to keep it down.
“Thank you for the drink,” I said when I was done, trying to sound sincere.
He knew I’d lied, for he smiled briefly, his dark eyes flashing with cool amusement.
“It was wise to not refuse,” he replied.
He told me what he would have done had I not drunk, and my insides crawled with horror as he spoke, and I wanted him to stop, but to interrupt would have been a dire insult. His words were etched into my memories, and for days after I shivered whenever I thought of the fate I had so narrowly avoided. I still feel cold and small when I think about what he told me.
That evening, I threw up my dinner. I threw up the crackers I’d eaten. I even threw up water. Finally, I stopped eating and drinking altogether and waited a full day to try again. I was weak and miserable, but I survived.
Now, seeing him approaching on the road, I mentally cursed my misfortune. This was our busy time of year. I couldn’t afford to be sick for a day.
He stopped just before he reached me. Raised a hand and beckoned for me to come closer, flashing that thin, dry smile at the look of dread on my face.
“Are you not thirsty?” he asked mockingly.
“Not particularly, but if you wish to offer me a drink, I will not be so rude as to refuse.”
My heart hammered in my chest.
“Be at ease—I did not come to offer you a drink. I came to give you a warning: your campground is stirring. They seek the unwary... and one of your charges has conducted business with the children.”
I stood there, staring blankly at him. He sighed, almost imperceptibly, and even though his expression did not change, I felt the weight of his disapproval when he spoke next. These ancient beings do not enjoy having to explain themselves.
“The Children with No Wagon,” he said, speaking slowly, as if that would help me understand. “Someone bought ice from them.”
“Oh,” I said dumbly. “Oh no.”
RULE #5: You can buy ice from the children who approach your camp ONLY if they have a wagon. Those are the children of other campers trying to make some extra spending money. If a group of children approaches you
without a wagon, do not buy ice from them. Act like they don’t exist. The ice is not worth the consequences.
It wasn’t until the Man with the Skull Cup was almost out of sight that I realized I didn’t have any idea which campsite had purchased the ice, and there were a lot of people here right now. I did the dumb thing. I jumped on the four-wheeler, turned it around, and went after him. I pulled up along the side of the road, a respectful distance away, and called out to him.
“Hey, what campsite was it?”
He paused almost imperceptibly.
“Are you thirsty after all?” Even though his words were mild, I understood them for the threat they were.
“Nope, I’m good, sorry for bothering you.”
I drove away before he changed his mind on granting me mercy. This was not good. The Children with No Wagon had been on the campground for generations, according to my family records, but they were a wild card. Just like human children, their behavior could be unpredictable. And dangerous.
There was, however, someone I could ask for help.
I went to see my longest-running camp. They’re a group of friends who have been coming here for over two decades and are willing to work with me. As a result, I’ve given them the best campsite. It’s up on a hill, nestled in a clear spot among the trees so that their camp has shade most of the day and there’s spots to hang hammocks. A gas line runs up the hill, so I have to keep part of it free of trees, which funnels the breeze straight into their camp. It’s noticeably cooler there than the rest of the site.
It’s also the most dangerous.
I heard their shouting before I arrived. I slowed, cutting the noise of the engine down enough that I could make out words. I needn’t have bothered. It was nothing but cursing. I couldn’t tell if it was an intra-camp dispute (doubtful, they kept the drama to a minimum) or if they were angry at another group (plausible, they had a couple of feuds going on with the younger camps) or if it was something else. Bracing myself, I hopped off the vehicle and walked in past the line of tents that marked their boundary.
There were five people in the common area, clustered around the beer kegs. They had a cooler that was outfitted with four taps, and they ran lines up through a steel plate that was packed with ice, providing access to chilled beer from the tap at any time. Right now, they had all four taps open, and dark liquid was spilling out onto the ground. There was an odd smell in the air that turned my stomach.
Like a butcher’s shop, I thought.
“Is that... blood?” I ventured, walking closer.
“YES.” Erin, the woman who brewed their beer, kicked one of the kegs. “All of them are blood. Is this an omen? Do we need to pack up and leave early?”
I lifted the cooler lid and found a maze of tubing enmeshed in a pile of ice. Ice that was no doubt bought from ordinary, human children, but that didn’t matter anymore. No one was safe.
“It’s more like a threat,” I said grimly. “I’m going to deal with it, though. I just need to talk to the Thing in the Dark.”
“Sure.” She jerked her head at the back of their camp, where the trees crowded in close enough that their shadows overlapped, and the forest floor was noticeably darker under the lattice of their branches. “We haven’t seen the solars go out all week, though, so maybe it’s not home.”
RULE #7: Keep track of what time the charge on the solar lights typically runs out. If the solars go out before then—if
all the lights go out—keep your eyes shut. Get back in your tent and do not leave until sunup. Whatever you do, do not look outside.
Some of the creatures on my campground are less malevolent than others. So long as they are respected, they won’t kill you or even seriously harm you. My father had spoken to the Thing in the Dark once, asking it what it wanted. It didn’t want anyone to look at it. That was all. And I’d visited the Thing too, back when I needed to put the senior camp near its lair. I asked if their proximity would disturb it. It replied that it would not, but nor would it hesitate to take any of the campers, should they break our agreement.
The creature’s lair is nothing more than a mound of broken branches, easily mistaken for a pile of stacked debris. The creature itself rarely leaves, but when it does, well, people vanish.
I crept into the forest, wincing at the branches that cracked under my feet. The air grew colder as I approached. Sound fell away, encasing me in silence so heavy that the only thing I heard was my own heartbeat. As I drew nearer, it felt like the darkness in between the piled branches was reaching out, gathering up all the light, and dragging it to its doom. I shut my eyes.
“Excuse me,” I whispered, my voice cracking. I coughed and tried again. “Sorry to bother you, but I have a question.”
A long silence. Then it spoke. Its words were rough, like stones rolling against each other. I winced in pain, for it felt like my head was between those stones and my skull would crack under their weight. It asked me what I wished to know.
I told it about the children. That someone had bought ice from them.
“The children are displeased by their lack of prey,” it finally replied. I pressed my fingers against the bones near my ear, as if that could help relieve the pressure. “They rejoice at finally being given an opportunity.”
“To do what?”
The pile of branches moved. The earth shifted and I stumbled. Its shrug had nearly thrown me to the ground.
“This is just the start,” it sighed. “More will suffer. All will suffer.”
I felt cold inside. All of my campers were at risk. Goat Valley itself could be at risk.
“What can I do?”
“Eliminate the one that started it.” The ground bucked violently, and I was thrown to my hands and knees. “Either they bear the consequences alone... or everyone else will in their stead.”
I stumbled to my feet, gibbering my apologies to the Thing in the Dark for disturbing it and my gratitude for its advice. Then I fled, fighting the urge to look back the entire time.
I called over the radio for my available staff to convene at the barn. If we were going to find out who bought the ice, we’d need to go from campsite to campsite talking to people, and I try to leave the whole socializing part of this job to employees with actual social skills. It’s important to know your weaknesses when you’re in a leadership position.
Bryan was the first to arrive. He brought his dogs, because Bryan
always brings his dogs. The massive black hounds are a fixture on the campground, part of the package when I hired Bryan shortly after I took over. His family is from Ireland. They came over during the potato famine and have retained that Irish heritage fairly strongly in their bloodline. Most of the family are redheads, except for Bryan and his dad, who have jet-black hair.
Bryan is my most reliable employee; he always shows up on time and doesn’t start drama—mostly because he prefers the company of his dogs over that of the rest of the staff. He entered the barn, almost swallowed up in the sea of charcoal fur around him.
I’ve had more than a few panicked phone calls from campers who have mistaken the dogs for wolves.
Two more of my employees trailed in shortly after. The campground is divided into sectors, and I gave the three of them each a couple to check, along with instructions on what to ask the campers, and then sent them on their way. Then I waited. I waited a bit more. Then I finally got on the radio and asked where the hell Jessie was.
“I haven’t seen her for the past two hours,” Bryan replied. “Want me to go look for her?”
“No, I’ll handle section N myself,” I sighed. “She probably forgot to charge her radio again.”
Normally an absent staff member was cause for concern, but Jessie was... well. Jessie was a problem. She didn’t want to be here. She didn’t like the manual-labor parts of the job. And her dislike of the campground had extended to the staff who
did like working here, which soured those working relationships pretty quickly. I tried to assign her tasks she could do by herself, like cleaning the bathrooms. The only reason she was still around was because she didn’t have better job options in town, and the only reason I hadn’t fired her was because her dad was the town’s dentist. I had a strong interest in not making an enemy of the person poking around inside my mouth. I admit part of me hoped that a monster would get her and save me the hassle of managing her, though.
Eliminate the one that started it. Those words rattled around in my head as I went from campsite to campsite in section N, asking if they’d bought ice from the Children with No Wagon today. I received quizzical looks from the newer campers, but the older ones answered solemnly, understanding the gravity of my question. They knew the rules.
But apparently no one knew who had bought the ice. Clearly someone was lying, but, eventually, I gave up and radioed Bryan and the rest of the staff to tell them to go home.
I spent the evening digging through my books of camp management and folklore, trying to find some sort of ritual or appeasement I could try. There wasn’t much to go on. The children had shown up on the campground during my great-aunt Pearl’s tenure, and while she’d given the family strict instructions to not “play along with their games,” the details of what would happen had been lost along the way. My family’s philosophy has always been that if a creature isn’t an active threat, leave it alone. Don’t interact; don’t attempt to drive it off; just be glad it’s not trying to eat the campers. As a result, the children had never been a big concern of mine. Sure, when they started selling ice a few years back, that was a bit alarming, but they didn’t seem to be trying very hard. But now they’d succeeded. I stared at the notes arrayed before me until my eyes ached and the words swam meaningless in front of me. This was unprecedented. And I don’t like unprecedented. At Goat Valley, unprecedented is dangerous.
Night fell, and I reluctantly abandoned my efforts until the morning. I slept fitfully and awoke an hour before dawn.
It was still dark when I threw on some clothing and headed to the garage for my four-wheeler. I even skipped making coffee. I needed to see what had happened overnight.
The Man with the Skull Cup stood on the road, staring off into the trees and calmly sipping the liquid inside his cup like he was taking his morning tea and not something that had made me vomit for twenty-four hours straight. I pulled up close by and killed the engine so we could talk.
“Skipped your coffee, did you?” he asked. “Want a drink?”
“I am quite satisfied, but I will gladly accept if you wish to share,” I replied with gritted teeth.
That thin smile again. Now he was just messing with me.
I looked in the direction he was staring. In the distance was a line of people—twelve in all—dangling in midair. For one brief, horrifying moment I could only think of the last time I’d found someone who hadn’t heeded the rules, their gutted body dangling uncomfortably close to my house, like it was a warning. The bloody remains that I’d had to clean up, alone.
“Oh no no no no,” I gasped, abandoning the four-wheeler to run toward them.
They were alive. I almost wept with relief. Each person hung from the branches by their ankles, their bodies covered with bruises and scratches. It seemed they had been violently dragged across the ground before being strung up. But at least they were alive.
“Next time it’ll be their flayed skins hoisted in the branches,” the Man with the Skull Cup said from behind me. “You should end this quickly.”
“I’m surprised by your concern.”
I didn’t take my eyes off the campers, calculating how I was going to safely get them down.
“I need people to share a drink with,” he murmured. “I can’t do that if everyone dies. Speak with camp H34.”
“Wow, thanks, you could have told me that yesterday,” I muttered through clenched teeth.
I called Bryan to help get the terrified campers down. They didn’t fight much while we were doing this, just hung there limply, crying or whimpering softly. It made the job a lot easier. Deadweight is predictable, and we could pull them toward the ladder, get a good hold on them, and then cut the ropes and pass them down to the ground.
Eliminate the one that started it. As the abducted campers were taken off to the local hospital for treatment, I delegated the police paperwork to Bryan and jumped on my four-wheeler. Camp H34. People don’t usually recognize me as the camp manager, and so they don’t realize that when I show up in person to ask questions, it means that something has gone horribly wrong. The campers in H34 were helpful, and it only took a few questions to identify the man who had bought the ice.
“Did they have a wagon?” I demanded. “Did you
read the rules? It was number five. You don’t buy ice unless they have a wagon.”
“Oh,” he said bleakly. “That one. Well, there are a lot of rules.”
I took a breath. Held it a moment. Reminded myself that the majority of people are good-intentioned and don’t do things simply to cause trouble. That it is my responsibility as both camp manager and a decent human being to be understanding and help people, because we have a common goal. I want them to have a safe and fun camping experience that they survive, and they probably also want to stay alive. This man didn’t ignore my rule simply out of spite. It was an accident. An unfortunate accident. That’s what I told myself. I really didn’t want to do what the Thing in the Dark said I had to do.
I asked him why he’d glossed over that rule. My tone was polite and friendly without a hint of judgment. That’s the important bit—people respond in kind. So long as I didn’t accuse, he wouldn’t become defensive, and we could have a productive conversation.
I’ve done a lot of reading on conflict resolution and behavioral change.
He hadn’t taken them seriously, he admitted. He’d certainly read them. Intently, in fact, because he’d thought it was a joke, but it was a clever joke and he’d enjoyed it. But real? Nah. He pointed to his tent, showing how it had three feet of clearance between the other tents and that they’d brought a watertight container in case of flooding. The will was there. My system was flawed.
I swallowed some profanity. I thanked him for talking to me and walked away. Then I went into the woods and gathered some mushrooms.
They’re called destroying angel.
Amanita virosa.
I crushed the mushrooms and took the resulting juice (careful not to touch it with my bare hands) back to his camp. While the campers were out having lunch in the town, I snuck in and poured the juice into the man’s reusable water bottle, swirled it around to coat the sides, and then left it to dry.
At first it seemed like mere food poisoning, but by the time his campmates took him to the ER, he was suffering from liver and kidney failure. They did their best, but I had put a generous dose in that bottle, and his body simply could not keep up, not even with medical intervention. He was dead within thirty-six hours.
And that was the end of it. When I saw the Children with No Wagon next, they were dourly hauling their bags of ice from campsite to campsite, their faces sullen with frustration. I waved at them as I drove past on my four-wheeler. They’d been so close to getting what they wanted. And I’d ruined it. The campground was safe again.
Or so I thought.
